


Under the Silent Snow

by sunflower1343



Category: Finder no Hyouteki | Finder Series
Genre: Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2745710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower1343/pseuds/sunflower1343
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet coda to a sad ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Silent Snow

**Author's Note:**

> This is another fic from the time after Biblos went bankrupt when we didn't know if we'd ever find out what happened after Feilong took Takaba to Hong Kong. I wrote this as one possible ending. 
> 
> Written November 2005.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Snow. White specks swirling down at him out of the black heavens. Landing on his lips every so often. Not enough to assuage his terrible thirst, only enough to tease. He dragged his dry tongue across them, tasting his blood. 

The silence was such that he could hear the flakes click lightly as they hit the ground around him. A sharp contrast to the fierce battle that took place earlier. In the morning there would be no trace of what had occurred. Not until the next thaw. Not unless they brought dogs out to look.

They might. The car would be found, abandoned not far from here, left when they'd fled it. There might be enough concern that people would search for the driver. But more than likely in this remote area they would steal the car, considering themselves lucky to have come upon such a prize with no owner around. 

He tried to move his legs but he could no longer feel them. The numbness was moving higher. The bullet wound in his thigh had stopped aching long ago. The one in his stomach was fading. Soon the feeling would be gone from his hands. He grasped at the body under them, desperate to hold on while he could, to hold what was his.

White flakes continued to fall toward him. As if their purity was drawn by his sin. Opposites attracting. 

His thoughts cycled back and through the events that had led to this isolated woods in northern China. The why and how no longer mattered. He had misplayed his hand one too many times. It was that simple. He didn't trace the steps to place blame though but to look for jewels, fragments that shone bright among his dark thoughts. A blush. A kiss. A glare. A rare smile aimed at him. Perhaps there could have been more of those, but it was never meant to be between them. And now...

He tried to move his head, to look down, but it wouldn't obey him. His arms were too heavy for him to shift even his hands. He summoned all his will and stretched the fingers of his left hand from where they lay on the thin jacket, the tips of them just barely able to brush against the ends of snow-cover hair. It melted under his fingers as they fell though the soft strands to the ice cold neck beneath. His right hand was still held tight in the frozen grasp of the smaller hand that had reached out to him in its last effort to say something.

The numbness was still climbing. Soon the feeling would be gone from his heart.

 

\--

 

Snow crunched under soft leather boots. Long, silky hair whipped across the face of the man who slowly made his way across the clearing in the late afternoon sun. His cane occasionally skidded, causing the men behind him to start forward nervously but he abruptly waved them back.

He came to a stop at the small mound in the center. He lowered himself to one knee, grunting at the pain, and with a gloved hand brushed the snow aside.

He stared at the pale jewel-encrusted face of his nemesis, almost expecting the eyes to open, devil that he was. But in the end this was only a man, and the face remained still and lifeless. 

His eyes were drawn down to the other body, the one that had been feet away when he'd been carried from the clearing last night. His gaze tracked back over a faint trail behind it that began in a blood-darkened patch of snow. It was a hard-won path that the boy had dragged himself along until he came to his final resting place across the chest of the other.

He wondered if they'd managed to speak in those last moments. Then his eyes rested on their laced fingers, and he knew they hadn't needed to.

He bent and pressed his lips upon his enemy's in benediction, melting the ice from them and taking it into his heart. His rage was gone. Now there was only a barren tundra, cold winds blowing through it, freezing his soul.

He gathered his strength and rose to his feet, ignoring the pain from his wounds seen and unseen. As he brushed by his men, he paused, a black marble angel with hard eyes staring dispassionately across a graveyard. His voice chilled the men more than the wind.

"Bury them together. They at least deserve that."

 

\--

 

Snow fell again later that night, obscuring what had gone before. Three hearts had been warm and full of fire. Two hearts were now still and cold. The ice around the last numbed its having shattered. They were all of them buried in that clearing, under a blanket of snow, as the flakes fell silently from the black heavens.

 

~end~


End file.
